


wrote my way out

by shellybelle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Poetry, insults as endearments, like so much poetry i'm genuinely sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellybelle/pseuds/shellybelle
Summary: It's way easier to put your feelings on paper than to deal with them out loud.(Or: five poems Nursey writes about Dex, and the moment Dex finds them.)





	wrote my way out

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 1 of NurseyDex Week 2017 - "Mutual Pining/Get Together"
> 
> me, realizing i haven't written anything for this prompt: oh shit what's fast  
> me: 5+1 FICS OK LET'S DO IT
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

1.

when you visit the Dead Sea,

they warn you:

_beware: the water can be severely painful in open wounds._

it is a wonder, and yet sharp:

even a shaving nick, they say, when touched

can set the nerves to screaming.

i didn't know

how exposed i was

until i stepped into your waves.

 

...

 

2.

i've always said

that i'm a pacifist

but sometimes anger gets shit done.

i might have to revise

my stance on violence—

today you hit a man for me,

and darling,

my lungs forgot the trick to breathing—

i wanted so badly

to steal the air from yours

through your lips.

 

...

 

3.

i asked my mother once:

what is it like to fall in love?

she told me, sweetheart:

it's the first breath of air

when you've been underwater—

when your lungs open up and you think,

oh yes, _yes_ , finally: _here_.

with you, it was different—

i fell for you like losing a wrestling match

grapplingstrugglingclasping

(wishing to sink

my teeth

into your skin

but god, it breaks all the rules—)

and the inevitable pin.

i would tell you that you disarm me,

but love, i think you'd just start a fight

about nuclear war.

 

...

 

4.

yes:

i know that i could write you in all the colors of fall

spell out the ways

that summer sun fades to autumn afternoon across your skin

all the ways that you are not

bright August sunburns

but you are pale October mornings

crisp with the chance of storms on the air.

but i didn't fall for you for the shades of

the seasons on your body

no—

i fell when i realized

you'd laugh

if you ever knew i said i'd _fall_ for you

when i compared you to autumn

(the moment i realized that

_asshole_

had become _sweetheart_

on my lips)

 

...

 

5.

breathing has never been my luxury.

air has caught in my throat

more times than i can count.

the moment of

 

c o n s t r i c t i o n

 

before impact

before terror

(before death, i think, sometimes,

but i've never dared wonder too hard)

is as familiar to me

as a hypnic jerk

which is to say—

i know it

but it chokes me

every time

 

today

you pushed my hand against your chest.

 _breathe with me_ , you told me

like it was the simplest thing.

sweetheart,

how do i tell you

that you are the reason

my mind tells my lungs

it would be better

(easier)

to suffocate

than to let myself think

_what if, what if, what—_

 

…

 

Dex doesn't mean to find them.

 

Their shared room isn't all that big, and it's not rare for their stuff to get mixed together on the floor or on the desk—especially on the desk, since they only had space for one. They'd made a schedule for it, when they first moved in, but Nursey uses it so rarely for actual homework that it's really mostly Dex's, save for the amount of Nursey's junk that finds its way onto it.

 

Still, just because their textbooks and notebooks get mixed up doesn't mean Dex goes _into_ Nursey's stuff. It's straight-up snooping, first of all, which is a dick move, but it's also just...not how he wants to get inside Nursey's head.

 

Because he does want to. So badly it aches.

 

The wanting had crept up on him, slow and building like a rising tide. Dex is a strong swimmer—has to be, he works on boats all summer, he wouldn't dare otherwise—but Nursey has pulled him in like a fucking riptide. There's always been something magnetic between them, their chemistry on the ice drawing them close and their clashing personalities keeping them at arm's length, but their natural state is to twist to whatever position will let their polarized edges snap together. He feels Nursey's presence at his side like his own body when he's there, misses him like a phantom limb when they're apart.

 

So when one of Nursey's many notebooks, bound in supple black leather, the pages crinkled with how hard the ink has been pressed to the paper, falls off the desk as Dex pulls his comp linguistics book out from under a stack and lands, open, on the floor—

 

He looks.

 

The poems take his breath away. He hasn't read a poem since AP English his senior year of high school, and he knows _how_ to read poetry, how to look for meaning and metaphor, but these aren't like the old poems he read in class—odes to pottery and the English countryside and sonnet after sonnet to an unnamed lover. These have a sort of raw, unpolished emotion to them that make his skin tingle, that make him feel more like he's reading a diary than a piece of art. They're clearly drafts, not edited or intended for school; lines crossed out and the occasional self-critical note scribbled beside them, but they're beautiful.

 

And, he realizes slowly, tracing his fingertips over a line of ink— _i didn't know how exposed i was—_ Nursey's in love.

 

It hits him like a knife to the chest and he feels like an idiot for it. Of course Nursey's in love, Nursey talks all the time about how he's “the worst kind of fucking romantic, Poindexter,” flopping down onto the couch to wax poetic about the barista whose hand lingered against his at Annie's or the guy in his Diaspora Poetry class who sits next to the window and “the way the light hits his _eyes_ , Dex, it's fucking un _fair—_ ” Nursey is always in love. Dex is _used_ to Nursey in love.

 

But this, this is a different kind of emotion. This is... _exposed_ , to use Nursey's word, open and bleeding and not—not _chill_. It's not wrapped in loose limbs and easy smirks and drawling laughs, it's hurting and honest and...Dex traces a letter with a shaking hand, trying to think of the word, and all he can come up with is _brave_.

 

And he keeps reading, even though he shouldn't, because he wants to _know_ , wants to figure out who captured Nursey's fleeting gaze so deeply, who took him from laughing crushes on classmates to this, to words that feel so raw it's like they were dragged from his pen kicking and screaming.

 

(Once, watching Nursey curled up in the corner of his bed, a notebook propped on his knees, his pen scratching almost desperately, Dex had commented, without thinking, “Do you always write like that?”

 

Nursey had looked up slowly, like a man emerging from a daze. “Like what?”

 

“Like...” Dex waved his own pencil around. He wasn't getting anywhere on his calc homework anyway. “Like it would hurt if you stopped.”

 

Nursey looked down at his notebook, and then up at Dex again. His eyes were strange as they settled on his face, his gaze penetrating, and Dex had almost wanted to put his calc book between them, some kind of shield, as if to keep Nursey from looking straight into his soul.

 

“It's not that it hurts to stop,” he'd said finally. “It's just...if the words don't get on the page, I might drown in them, y'know? They have to go somewhere.”

 

He'd laughed, then, like he'd said something embarrassing. “I guess that doesn't make sense.”

 

 _You're beautiful when you talk like this_ , Dex had thought, and then bitten his tongue.

 

“It doesn't have to make sense to me,” he'd said instead, and Nursey's smile, before he'd ducked his head back down to his notebook, had kept him warm for the rest of the night.)

 

Dex reads, and reads, and keeps reading, and if had felt like drowning to write the words it feels like suffocating to read them.

 

And then—

 

( _the moment i realized that_ asshole _had become_ sweetheart _on my lips_ )

 

—it clicks.

 

He sucks in a breath.

 

The door to their room opens, and he snaps his head up.

 

Nursey stares at him. Dex sees the instant he recognizes the notebook in Dex's hands—his face goes grey and his shoulders stiffen, his fingers going tight on the strap of his backpack.

 

“Dex,” he says, and his voice is a croak, hoarse. It's a breath away from the way it had broken before the panic attack Dex had had to talk him out of in the bathroom two weeks ago, and a flare of worry cuts through Dex's veins. He puts the book down and gets to his feet.

 

Nursey takes half a step back as Dex rises, like he's afraid, and God, that's so much worse than anger, than frustration, than fake chill, than anything else he could possibly do. “Dex,” he says again. “Dex, I can explain—”

 

Dex moves on autopilot, reaching for him. He should be terrified right now, he thinks, he's never done this before, but he's never, ever been surer. Gently, he cups Nursey's face in his hands.

 

“Hey,” he says. His hands aren't shaking, but his voice is. Nursey stares at him, eyes wide, but he doesn't pull away. He falters, unsure what to say next, and then just...

 

He huffs out a sigh, and leans forward, resting his forehead against Nursey's. “Hi, asshole,” he says.

 

Nursey goes still, and then he shudders, and then he laughs, and it's like the breaking of a damn. “You _motherfucker_ ,” he says, and lifts his face, and grabs Dex by the shirt, dragging him in for a kiss.

 

The word tastes like _darling_ on his tongue.

 

 _Poetry isn't so hard to understand_ , Dex thinks, and pulls him closer, and gives up on thought.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was written today in 20 minute spurts as i took breaks from packing my entire apartment in preparation for moving tomorrow, i am _so fucking sorry_
> 
> poetry is my secret vice but i've never written a love poem even Once In My Life soooooooo idk i channeled my inner Pining College Hipster idk, please see above re: i am so fucking sorry
> 
> likelihood that i will write more for this week? high! likelihood that it will be good quality fic? STATISTICS ARE A LIE.


End file.
